


Lighting Matches

by flying_one



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon-Character Death, Cars, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Drugs, Gratuitous use of italics, I'm an attention whore, Inception - Freeform, Kavinsky is his own warning, Kavinsky is my problematic fave, M rated for later chapters, M/M, On Hiatus, and just to provide you with character studies, even if that scheme is actually tiny, give me comments for this, happy 4th of july!, in the grand scheme of the universe, rovinsky, self-destructiveness, seriously, slight Dom/sub in later chapters probably, who needs to feel like I matter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-21 14:37:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7391158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flying_one/pseuds/flying_one
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan didn’t really want any substances. It was more like he was a substance himself, waiting to be consumed.<br/>And Kavinsky was an expert at substance abuse.</p><p> </p><p>--- On Hiatus ---</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> I actually fucking hate myself for writing this, and for it being so easy to write when I have an actual, real, original novel I want to finish...  
> But maybe this is just like - needing to get something out of my system, before I can carry on with my life? I don't know. I just hope it'll be worth it for someone.

Ronan Lynch was the punchline to a joke he wasn’t in on.  
Lately, even his dreams were laughing at him. Cabeswater’s trees, laughing with the wind shaking their leaves. _Quid vis, Greywaren?_  
The night horrors, laughing with the clicking of their beaks. _Quis es?_  
There was no escaping gravity, not even in dreams, so Ronan stopped sleeping. He’d sit in the driver’s seat of his BMW, headphones plugged into the stereo, punching his eardrums with the beat of whatever volatile music he’d currently shoved into the disc slot. He’d drink and he’d start the ignition with a searing urge to self-destruct. When he was racing, when he beat Kavinsky, his heart sang with it. _Who’s laughing now?_ It seemed to sing.  
Joseph Kavinsky was a coke head, and when he was high, it seemed like everything was funny to him, especially Ronan. He reminded Ronan of that shitty The Weeknd song. _When I’m fucked up that’s the real me._  
Yeah, Kavinsky was fucked up, and fake, and a forger, and a thief, but in the small stretches of time he spent racing Ronan, fighting Ronan, fucking with his head, he was also unapologetically real. Kavinsky, he thought, was what happened when you stripped the boy of civilisation. He was lord of the flies, king of the damned, and his promise still rang in Ronan’s ears, his gun shaped fingers still tickled his jaw. _I will burn you down._  
Ronan didn’t know whether he was dreading it or looking forward to it.  
With Adam gone god knows where and Gansey busy avoiding Blue and Blue busy avoiding Gansey, there wasn’t much to do at Monmouth except getting drunk and pacing his room. He was going to be an alcoholic. Maybe he was already an alcoholic. Didn’t they say that drinking alone was the first step?  
His phone buzzed in his back pocket, caught on one of the threads of his frayed jeans when he tried to pull it out. The thread snapped.  
  
_Look out the window._  
  
Down in the parking lot, shining in the moonlight, sat a brand new Mitsubishi, identical to the ones near the fair ground, down to the knife sprayed on the side. Ronan shrugged into his leather jacket, slipped into his shoes and made his way downstairs. Cautiously, he approached the car, thinking of the pyrotechnics Kavinsky had such a boner for, that it’d be all too easy to make the car blow up with Ronan inside. _I will burn you down._  
There was a note behind the windshield, folded. His fingers skidded over the door handle. _It’s a bomb. Just like you._  
He yanked it open and was indeed hit by an explosion, not a fiery kind but the smell of Kavinsky. Hypermasculine bodyspray and fresh sweat and hot pink bubblegum and something like — gunpowder. The car stayed put, refusing to blow up. Ronan snatched the note from the dashboard, eyes flitting over Kavinsky’s scrawl.  
  
_This one’s for you. Fast and anonymous, just as you like it. xoxo_  
  
It was a bait, one Ronan wasn’t going to fall for. He opened the glove compartment and watched a few bags of green pills tumble out, a lighter, a CD, all dream objects, undoubtedly, dreamed up in the same breath as the Mitsu. Why couldn’t Kavinsky just stop giving him stuff? Ronan stuck the CD inside the stereo and listened to Hozier’s voice dripping out the speakers.  
  
When I was a child I heard voices. Some would sing and some would scream. You soon find you have few choices. I learned the voices died with me.  
  
Was this a song Kavinsky liked or that he thought Ronan would like? He didn’t know. He leant back against the headrest and let the seat swallow him. He hadn’t raced in too long, but he couldn’t race, not without giving in to Kavinsky’s bait. But oh, how he wanted to race. Or to dream. The pills were right there, at his fingertips. He hovered over them for a second, then swerved off to the left and crumpled Kavinsky’s note in his fist. Racing, dreaming, both were unwise now that he knew their dreaming took energy from the ley line.  
  
_When I was a child I’d sit for hours. Staring into open flame. Something in it had a power. Could barely tear my eyes away._  
  
Ronan thought he might go mad with wanting, something he couldn’t grasp - every time he thought he could almost taste it, slivers of alcohol and adrenaline, it slipped away again. Ronan didn’t really want any substances. It was more like he was a substance himself, waiting to be consumed. And Kavinsky was an expert at substance abuse.  
Against every better judgement, Ronan started the car. Ronan saw himself smiling in the side mirror, the dangerous quirk to his mouth, even his reflection, laughing at him.  
Two white Mitsubishis pulled up at the traffic intersection. Two Aglionby boys behind two wheels, two pairs of eyes meeting, one smug, one glaring.

  
Kavinsky rolled down his window. “See you got my present, princess.”

  
“Yeah. How sweet of you.”

  
“Now it comes down to skill, man. Didn’t want you thinking I could only beat you in a dream car. I’m not a cheater.”

  
Ronan grinned. “That’s exactly who you are.”

  
As if to prove Ronan’s point, Kavinsky winked at him, stomped down on the gas pedal and rushed the red light, flashing Ronan his backlights. Bastard.  
  
—  
  
Joseph Kavinsky was a coke head and a thief, he was a Bulgarian mobster jersey trash piece of shit. He was a nine out of ten on the scale from salvation to heartbreak. He was a zero on the scale of wanting to change. Joseph Kavinsky was, in short terms, damned.  
What the rest of Aglionby didn’t know was that underneath all that, there was a part of him that had dreams. And to dream, you had to have imagination. And to have imagination, you’d have to have — no, screw that. He didn’t know what he’d been going on about.  
Currently, his imagination was very much preoccupied with pushing Ronan Lynch down on the hood of his Evo and wondering what he’d taste like if Joseph was to lick a stripe up his throat and if he’d try to fight it if he bit him.  
“What are you staring at?” Lynch asked, and damn, for looking so menacing he could really act fucking innocent. It rubbed Joseph all kinds of wrong, but then again, maybe Lynch seriously didn’t know. Didn’t know why he kept coming back, even after declaring it wasn’t ever going to be them. Oh, but Joseph knew. He could see it in the hard set of his jaw, he could fucking smell it on him, and what was even more infuriating, he could see it when Lynch looked at Dick, or Trailer Trash, when he thought they wouldn’t notice. Ronan Lynch was a car crash.

  
“Just this sore loser who couldn’t handle my Evo.”

  
Lynch bared his teeth, and all Joseph could think about was how much he wanted them on his neck.

  
“You rigged that car.”

  
He threw his head back and laughed. “We can switch if you like. Didn’t think you’d be into that.”

  
“Deal,” Lynch grumbled, taking the bait, fishhooks sinking their hold into his lower lip. Deeper.

They would have to go deeper than that, get Lynch to take the things he needed even more than the racing, and the dreams, and then Joseph would dangle them. He was a dealer. Well, part-time. He knew how these things worked. He slammed the door to Lynch’s Evo and gave him a small salute through the window.  
If Joseph Kavinsky was going to hell for being king of the damned, he’d damn better take the damned with him. He’d take Ronan Lynch.


	2. Silence

When Niall Lynch died, all the birds stopped singing. It was probably ‘cause he’d dreamt them, but to Ronan, it was because the world had ended. He looked at the Gray Man, and he could hear that silence again. The rushing of blood inside his ears. A stretch of fractured time, alive one second, dead the next. An earthquake went through Ronan, a 4.1 on the Richter scale, and one second he’d been standing there, the next his hands were around the Gray Man’s throat. He _felt_ more than saw his fingernails digging into the scruffy skin covering the Gray Man’s windpipe, felt the crack in the mold as his fingers broke through.   
Gansey and Adam dragged him off. Their hold burned his arms with the fire of betrayal.

  
“Whatever you do for me,” Ronan spat. “I’ll never forgive you.”

  
“They never do,” the Gray Man said.

Ronan tore out of the others’ grasp. He didn’t know how he suddenly got to sit in a white Mitsubishi at a traffic intersection, but there he was, staring at the red lights ahead. Of all the places to go to, his body had brought him _here_. His mind was still at 300 Fox Way. Lost time. There one second, here the next. He felt as illicit as someone on the way to pick up a prostitute. Street corners and traffic intersections had a similar kind of atmosphere to them, one that was a few hundred miles removed from Gansey’s Henrietta, even if it was just a five minutes drive.   
A blue Volvo pulled up next to Ronan like the purring, ferocious answer to his unspoken prayers. He was craving the fix, and people who rode Volvos were people easily goaded into providing it, if the logo was anything to go by. Maybe this time, Ronan would finally run the car into a tree, spare the Gray Man the trouble of having to run from Greenmantle, because the Greywaren would be splattered across the trunk of an oak. No, Ronan didn’t actually want to die. He raced to feel _alive_.   
Ronan revved the engine and flipped off the driver in the Volvo, who rolled down his window. He’d expected some balding businessman, or a fretful accountant, but the boy who sat in the driver’s seat, pink lips wrapped around a lollipop, was Prokopenko.

  
“Lynch,” he said, cheerfully, pushing the lollipop towards the side of his mouth. “You’re in a good mood.”

  
“Fuck off,” Ronan said. “What’s with the — I wouldn’t even wanna call it a car. Where’s your golf?”

  
Prokopenko stuck his tongue out at him. “Repairs.” For a second, Ronan wondered whether Proko had brought the Golf to Adam’s repair shop, just to humiliate him. God, he hoped not.

  
Prokopenko gave off a loud smacking sound as the lollipop passed between his lips. It was hot pink, possibly strawberry flavored, and Prokopenko smirked like there was some sort of joke Ronan didn’t get. It was more than possible that this Volvo did belong to some accountant. Hot-wiring, after all, wasn’t that difficult, and if Kavinsky knew how to, Proko surely did as well. Did Prokopenko know he wasn’t real? Did Ronan’s mother know? No, don’t think about it, Ronan told himself. He’d come here to forget.

  
“Are we gonna race or what?”

  
Prokopenko grimaced. “I’m not racing the Evo in this piece of shit.”

  
“Coward,” Ronan grumbled. Inside the Volvo, a cellphone went off and Ronan had the displeasure to listen to half a conversation that went something like this:

“No. What? Motherfucker, I was. No. Ran into Lynch. No, not literally. What? Why?” Prokopenko scratched his nails along the dashboard, then threw Ronan a look and rolled his eyes. “As usual. Bitch-facing. What the fuck? Yeah. Yeah, ok. I got it man, don’t rub it in.” He hung up with a sigh.

  
“Joey,” he offered as an explanation. For a second, Ronan was confused, then he realized the other boy meant _Kavinsky_.

  
“Is he gonna race me?” Ronan was getting impatient. He had to smash something or race, or go insane right this moment.

  
“No, we’re, like, having a sit-in.”

  
“A sit-in,” Ronan repeated, dryly.

  
“You thought we only ever go out big?” Prokopenko’s phone rang again, and now Ronan recognized the ringtone. It was Barbie Girl.

  
“What?” Proko snapped. “No, not yet. Fine. Lynch? You’re invited. Happy?” That last word seemed directed at the phone. Because Ronan wasn’t happy. He wanted to race, not get invited to sit-ins.

  
“I don’t give a fuck whether you come tagging along or not,” Prokopenko said to Ronan. “Actually, stay away.”

  
Ronan scowled. He could either go back to Monmouth and face Gansey, who’d probably want to talk about the hitman, or he could keep prowling the streets, hoping someone was going to race him. No kicks guaranteed. Now, Ronan’s phone rang. He only picked up because it was Kavinsky.

  
“Lynch, darrrrling,“ he drawled, loudly enough that Prokopenko bared his teeth at Ronan. One of them was gold.

  
“What do you want?” Ronan asked.

  
“Oh, you know, just calling to make sure you don’t forget to bring a pair of balls. I don’t trust Proko to get across the capital-A-awesomeness of this party, man. Jiang’s having a walk in night. Get any tattoo you want. Dream up some designs. Get smashed. I’ll drive you back home tomorrow, your girlfriend doesn’t even have to know.”

  
Of all the things, getting a new tattoo was the last on Ronan’s list. Getting smashed didn’t sound so bad, though.

  
“Alright. Distract me,” he rasped, and it wasn’t the first mistake, not the last either, but of all the stupid shit he’d ever done, this felt like some kind of a death sentence, he just wasn’t sure whose it was. He could hear Kavinsky cackling on the other end.   
Tailing Prokopenko, Ronan stopped the Mitsu in front of an abandoned warehouse. Or rather, it had been abandoned a few months ago. Now it looked just as shitty, but it was obviously inhabited. Proko pulled bags of groceries out of the trunk of the Volvo, vodka bottles clanking together. Ronan stood there, rubbing the back of his head.

“Need a hand?” he finally offered. Proko flipped him off. It was fitting, Ronan guessed. He didn’t belong here, never had. God, what was he doing?  
Without looking back, Proko threw the door to the warehouse open with a shoulder. Ronan took a last breath of night air before he followed.


	3. Invited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dream pack lair

The warehouse was lit by the headlights of four white Mitsubishis that were arranged in a strategic square to the four corners of the hall. They seemed to be permanent, because there were also couches, rugs, and even a mattress in the centre of the room, that reminded Ronan painfully of Gansey’s bed, only that this mattress would have fit at least five people. Someone had installed fairy lights in the windows, and a record player sat atop one of the window sills, probably for decorative reasons, as the music came blasting out of a regular if over-the-top expensive stereo. There was a fridge, too, next to one of the couches. They’d have to have a generator running somewhere. As Ronan contemplated the pack’s means of producing electricity, something hit him in the ribs. Kavinsky had come out of nowhere. Ronan heaved.

  
“Proko, you fucker. Did you suck Lynches cock or what took you so long?”

  
Because hitting someone in the ribs was apparently a way to say hello with Kavinsky, Ronan returned the favour. Kavinsky stumbled a few steps back, then let himself fall into one of the couches, laughing. Jiang, who was perched on that particular couch with Skov, kicked him. “Mother of — You want me to mess this up?” She pointed the tattooing needle at Kavinsky. “Don’t fucking shake me or Skov’ll end up with a dick on his ass.” Skov was partially undressed, which meant flashing his pale ass cheeks, lying across her lap.

  
“Wasn’t that what he wanted anyway?” Kavinsky laughed, then patted his own leg as an invitation for Proko to sit. He spread his arms. To Ronan he said: “Welcome to my kingdom, princess, meet my loyal servants.”

  
Jiang kicked him again. Swan, who was stuffing Proko’s groceries into the fridge, stuck his head out for a second to remark that all of them actually profited more from Kavinsky than he had chance to exploit them, and Ronan felt an instant of longing to crash on the floor in front of the couch, to listen to their banter and the buzzing of the needle, and sleep an eternal, dreamless sleep. Here, where no one knew about the hitman. Where no one cared. But he’d probably just wake up a minute later with something rude tattooed on his face.

  
“No shit, man. Your king feels very be-ne-vo-lent. So, what’s it gonna be, Lynch?” Kavinsky asked. “Booze? Coke? Tattoos? Dreams? Blowjobs? I can provide.”

  
Ronan pulled his hands out of his pockets for Swan to pass him a beer from the fridge. He proclaimed he was starting small, he could work up to the rest later.

Kavinsky looked gleeful. “What’s the ranking? Is a blowjob harder than coke, softer than…?”

  
“Depends on the kind of tattoo,” Ronan said.

Jiang threw her head back, laughing. If Ronan had been nice, he’d probably have told her that she had a nice laugh, but he wasn’t nice, and Jiang wasn’t nice either, so he doubted she’d have appreciated it. She was prickly like Blue, and weird like Blue, and Ronan thought they could have been friends, Jiang and Blue, if Blue hadn’t claimed the monopoly on female quirkiness so thoroughly that she didn’t even take notice of other girls anymore. No, he was being a hypocrite. It was hard to care for anyone else when you’d encountered people who were actually magical. People like Gansey, Adam, Noah. And _Kavinsky_ , a small part of him added. Jiang and Ronan seemed to get along better than him and Blue. Ronan didn’t even think he was especially funny, but one of the few times he said anything, Jiang cracked up so hard that Swan even managed to shove a compete doughnut into her mouth.  
Ronan’s phone kept ringing: Gansey. Gansey.  
Gansey again.  
And Ronan kept drinking: Beer. Vodka. Shots.  
Beer again.  
Kavinsky was suddenly draped over his back, stealing a look at the screen of Ronan’s phone.

“Aw, the girlfriend worries,” he breathed into Ronan’s ear. Ronan tried to shrug him off. “You not gonna call back?”

Kavinsky reached for the phone, but Ronan pushed him away, which only seemed to spur Kavinsky on, and all of a sudden they were chasing each other through the warehouse for the phone, until Kavinsky accidentally ran into one of the middle beams holding the ceiling and threw Ronan to the ground with him. He was bleeding from a little cut to his forehead and there was a small mole on his right cheek, and the memory of freckles spattered across his nose, and Ronan could feel him breathing underneath him, chest heaving and sinking.

  
“Dude, are you fucking blind?” Ronan asked, pulling off Kavinsky’s glasses. Kavinsky’s eyes were glinting madly, and he raised a hand, holding Ronan’s cellphone.

“Hello. Is this Dick Gansey the Third speaking? I’m calling back about that booty call,” he said in a falsetto voice, several pitches higher than was comfortable to human ears. Ronan could hear Gansey sigh on the other end of the line.

“Kavinsky. When will you grow up?” Then Ronan snatched the phone back from Kavinsky, rolled off the other boy and made his way outside, Kavinsky’s taunts thrown after him like sticky apple cores. He slammed the door.

  
“Gansey?”

  
“Ronan.”

  
“I’m sorry.”

  
“Just — forget it. You obviously don’t wanna talk about it.” _It_ being the hitman. _It_ being Niall Lynch. _It_ being the night horrors. How could _it_ hold so many monsters? The line clicked. Gansey had hung up.

  
Ronan leant against the wall of the warehouse and stared into the Henrietta night. He used to like summer. Now the air clung to him heavy and oppressive.  
The door creaked, and footsteps approached, and Ronan didn’t look up. Don’t let it be Kavinsky, he thought. Don’t let it be Kavinsky.  
It was Kavinsky.

  
“What do you want?” Ronan growled, savoring the few centimeters he had over Kavinsky now they were standing, hoping the other noticed, too.

  
“Hey, man. Easy. You’re the one who showed up, right?”

  
“Invited.” Ronan grit his teeth. “I just wanted to get drunk, not have to deal with Gansey and — raven shit.” He wasn’t sure whether he meant the other boys or Chainsaw. He was terrible with words, even inside his own head. “Thanks for ruining that, man.”

  
Kavinsky snorted. “I’ll make it up to you, princess. Come on, hit me. I know you wanna. You’ll feel better.”

  
Somehow, knowing that Kavinsky didn’t care, Ronan couldn’t bring up the rage, but he appreciated the sentiment.

“You’re fucked up, man,” he said. “Got a cigarette?”

  
“Joint,” Kavinsky said, pulling one out of his jeans. How did he not crush them? There wasn’t even room for his own ass in there, really. Ronan let Kavinsky place the joint between his lips and reach up to light it, then slumped back against the wall.

  
“What do _you_ want?” he asked Kavinsky, passing the joint.

  
“Same as you, babe. Gotta get my kicks.”

  
“Dreaming?” Ronan thought of the ley line and Adam, and the hitman who surely wouldn’t be the last to look for them. “Would you stop if you knew it was destroying the world?”

  
“God, that would be awesome,” Kavinsky exhaled. He was headed for something terrible. And like witnessing a car crash, Ronan couldn’t bring himself to look away, not from the smoke curling around them, not from Kavinsky putting the joint out on the back of his own hand, unflinching, leaving an angry red circle behind.

  
“What’s next?” Ronan asked.


	4. Razors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That time Ronan shaved his head

When Niall Lynch died, all the birds stopped singing. It was probably ‘cause he’d dreamt them, but to Ronan, it must’ve been because the world had ended. Because there was just — nothing left to say. Nothing left to sing about. Gansey knew that Ronan’s first reaction was to throw up behind the rosebushes that surrounded the Barns. His second reaction was to get incredibly, roaring drunk. It’d been after they renovated and moved into Monmouth, which had kept Ronan busy, but once they were settled, it was as if all the strings on him had been cut. There was nothing left to do — and Ronan was a puppet hanging loose. Not as physically immobile as his mother, perhaps, but emotionally immobile enough to warrant a concerned ache somewhere beneath Gansey’s rib-cage. The puppeteer had been bludgeoned to death with a tire-iron.   
Drugs were a poor substitute for control, but Gansey guessed Ronan couldn’t muster the energy for control, so drugs it was. And Gansey. Gansey, getting drunk with him. That was before he tried to get Ronan to be responsible. It was as if during that night, he knew there was no way of making Ronan hurt less, so he went along with it. And going along with it meant getting drunk, to the point where Ronan said:

“I think I’m gonna cut all my hair off now.”

And Gansey went like: “Okay? So do you need me to be the voice of reason here?”

“No,” Ronan rasped. “I’m sure.”

Gansey had watched Ronan disappear into the bathroom of Monmouth with the electric razor clutched in his hands, and tentatively tried again:

“Need me to stop you? No? Still sure? Alright then.”

Gansey migrated into the bathroom after Ronan, taking another beer from the fridge next to the sink, feeling like he’d need it and watched Ronan struggle with the razor. He had very thick hair, so it wasn’t easy.

“I think you need to go at it with a pair of scissors first,” Gansey volunteered.

He’d watched Ronan for some time now and come to the conclusion that the other boy was predictable only in his unpredictability. That whatever you thought he was not going to do would someday seem like a good idea to Ronan. Except dying his hair pink, maybe. Or deciding that excelling at school was his one and only passion. Okay, maybe there were some things Ronan Lynch could be trusted not to do. Ever. But. You never knew.

“No shit,” Ronan said, grabbing a pair of nail scissors from the cupboard.

“Maybe a larger pair than that,” Gansey said.

Ronan snorted. “We don’t have one.” He’d tried to cut his hair with the nail scissors. He’d tried until he got so frustrated he started yelling at his hair, going on about how it was too think, and Gansey tried again: “Need a larger pair?”

“We don’t have one.”

“Yeah, we do. The damned kitchen scissors.” Gansey strolled over to the counter to retrieve them, he knew Ronan wasn’t listening either way. The kitchen unit in the bathroom was the mess they’d made of it: empty beer bottles strewn across the counter, dishes piling up next to the toilet, the leftovers of a pizza still hanging halfway out of the microwave. A part of Gansey knew that this was definitely not hygienic, but a part of Gansey was also very drunk and couldn’t care less about hygiene.

“This is taking fucking ages,” Ronan called, still crouched in the shower. “I’m gonna be eighty before it’s come off.”

Gansey said: “Right. Who knows if you still want to look like a hooligan at eighty. If you keep yelling like that, our neighbors gonna be complaining in no time at all, though, it’s not gonna take eighty years.”

Ronan looked up for a second, stared up at the walls of the bathroom as if neighbors were suddenly going to materialize out of thin air, looking in through the shower tiles. “Neighbors don’t care,” he sneered.

“Alex does,” Gansey said.

“Who the fuck is Alex?”

“The guy who fucking saved us when we were locked in the attic?” Gansey didn’t usually swear, but when he was drunk, he’d occasionally let himself be goaded into one or two “Fuck”s. His parents wouldn’t approve, but his parents weren’t fucking here right now. Also, it made Ronan smirk. And right now, any facial expression suited Ronan better than crippling despair.

“You know his name?” Ronan asked. There was only one building adjacent to Monmouth, and it was inhabited by a man who Ronan had dubbed ’Spider’s George’, because he looked like he was getting by mainly on a diet of insects he found in his flat, he was thin like that, and his skin seemed to be made of rice paper.

“Yeah. He _told_ us, remember? You really should remember the names of people who saved your unlucky behind.”

“ _Behind_ , Gansey? Seriously? And it was an attic. Not the end of the world,” Ronan said. “For fuck's sake, man. My hair won’t come off. It’s too thick.”

“Try the scissors again.”

“This razor’s shit.”

“Try the scissors again.”

“They don’t do shit.”

“Try the bigger one.”

“We don’t have one.”

“Yes, the kitchen one,” Gansey sighed, holding it out again. Ronan didn’t take it.

“Seriously. It won’t come off. Noah’s gonna laugh at me.”

“Why?”

“He always does.”

Gansey stared at his bottle. “My beer’s empty,” he commented like it was the fucking saddest thing in the world. Which it was. Not the empty beer of course, but all the rest of it.

“My hair won’t come off,” Ronan repeated.

“Try the scissors again. Goddammit, Ronan. I have to pee.”

“Well, tough shit.”

“Great. Thanks,” Gansey said, unzipping. “You’re just gonna have to deal with me urinating next to your face then.”

Ronan smirked. “No big deal, Gansey, I’ve seen my share of dicks, yours isn’t that special.” The razor gave off a pathetic whine, then it stopped altogether, and Ronan cursed.

“No. You can’t do that to me. Don’t. You. Dare. Frodo managed to throw the fucking ring into Mount Doom. You can surely manage to cut my fucking hair. Dammit.”

It couldn’t. It needed to charge, and apparently Ronan did too. His batteries had run out. Gansey watched him pass out in the shower, curled up in a nest of his own hair, looking like he’d truly hit rock bottom, and Gansey couldn’t think of anything but how much he loved Ronan Lynch, and how he’d do anything to spare him the hurt he was going through. He wondered if, when they found Glendower, Ronan was going to ask for his father back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure I'm going to post the rest of this fic I have so far. It's sitting here on my laptop, but to be honest I'm not too motivated to proof-read right now, and I don't feel like it makes much of a difference. If anyone is interested, tell me, 'cause it feels like I'm all alone with this and no one cares, anyway (it doesn't have much hits either? so apparently not many people are even reading this). That's not necessarily a bad thing. It just means ao3 isn't my place-to-be at the moment.   
> I'm not saying this to be passive-aggressive or anything. It's just proving to me that I have other shit I should focus on.   
> So, yeah. Maybe this is it.


	5. P.A.S.I.V.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kavinsky has seen too many movies.

“Shared dreaming,” Kavinsky drawled. “The last big fucking mystery, man. Like some Inception kinda shit, right?”

Ronan snorted. “How would you know it’s even possible?” As far as he knew, they were both prisoners of their own minds. 

“Think, Ronnieboy. Would there be two of us if it wasn’t?”

“Don’t call me that.”

Kavinsky put his glasses back on. “Then use your pretty little head, alright? Two of us. One dream.” 

“I just don’t think that’s the way it’s supposed to go.”

“So, why’s it you and me then?” 

_It was never going to be you and me_. Ronan didn’t say it this time. It would have sounded fake, he was standing here _with_ Kavinsky after all, by something that was less coincidence than choice, even if he couldn’t wrap his head around the reasons for his own actions. 

“I dunno. Insurance. In case one of us dies,” he said instead. For a minute or two after he’d found out Kavinsky was a dreamer, he’d actually been scared they’d end up being brothers. It had made sense. Both dreamers. Both fatherless. It had freaked him out right until he’d decided it didn’t make any sense after all. Kavinsky neither had the Lynch look about him, nor his mother’s, and for all the secrets his dad had kept, another son wouldn’t have been one of them. 

“I told you man, dying is a boring side effect.”

“Whatever,” Ronan said. 

“You gonna try it then?”

“Try what?”

“Dream with me, dude. For real.” It sounded both vulnerable and dangerous coming out of Kavinsky’s mouth. And just like with Gansey, Ronan couldn’t help letting himself be infected by Kavinsky’s excitement. Maybe that’s what the rest of his life was gonna be, always chasing after someone else’s quest.   
Ronan inhaled the rest of his cigarette. He enjoyed withholding his thoughts from Kavinsky, even if his heart had already said yes, had said it so loudly that he was glad for the bass thumping throughout the car.   
Kavinsky smirked at him. He was getting better at reading Ronan, even when he didn’t say anything. Ronan scowled.

“So, tomorrow,” Kavinsky said. 

“Whatever, man. You don’t even know how to pull this off.”

“I do.” The truth was, out of the two of them, Kavinsky had had much more practice dreaming. A few hundred white Mitsubishis were testament to that. “And when you see me pull it off, oh, how you’ll get on your knees and beg to suck my cock.” 

“In your dreams.”

“Exactly.”

Ronan hated him.   
  
In retrospect, it was obvious. They were dreamers. If there was no limit to their imagination, there was no limit to the possibilities. It made Ronan’s head hurt just thinking about it, about what they could do and then what the fuck they were going to use it _for_.   
If someone gave you all the power in the world - what would you do with it?  
Kavinsky’s answer to that was simple: He was going to have fun. If anyone was ever going to die of all the fun they had, it would be Kavinsky. Fun, of course had to be defined by your proximity to something explosive and the likelihood of dying in the process.   
Unconsciously, Ronan knew that of course, that wasn’t all there was to it, that there was something Kavinsky wanted, more deeply, something that was much more complex than having fun or simply being self-destructive. But just like his own wanting - the precise nature of this desire escaped him the same way the smoke in front of his face took on all sorts of shapes but never revealed what exactly had been burned to produce it. Ronan could tell many things apart, but cigarette brands weren’t one of them.   
If the smoke was racing, getting into fights, getting drunk, the fire was something else entirely.

“What the fuck is that?” Ronan eyed the suitcase in Kavinsky’s hands suspiciously. “You been dreaming of being a lawyer or some shit?”  
They were in the clearing near the fair ground again, the sun reflecting back off the Mitsubishi’s and burning into Ronan’s skin.  

“It’s a PASIV, ballsack.”

“A what?” 

“Man, you’ve never seen Inception? You’ve been missing out like hell, you have.”  
Ronan didn’t really watch movies. Never had. Not because he didn’t understand their appeal, but because when your dreams were vivid and terrifying, and you were in them, looking at a screen felt kind of anticlimactic.   
The PASIV snapped open to reveal an array of wires and a big red button in the middle of it, two IVs dangling from tubes that Kavinsky spun from their clasps. 

“Ready to go down the rabbit hole, Alice?” Kavinsky grinned, holding up the IV. The reference hit Ronan almost like a real punch. It felt wrong. It felt stolen. 

“No,” he wanted to hiss, “You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to remind me.” But all he said was: “You wanna stick that in me?”

“Oh, I wanna stick a lot of things in you.”

“Go ahead,” Ronan said through his teeth and lay back on the hood of the Mitsu, his arm outstretched, already in Kavinsky’s grip. His hands were rough, calloused in the places where they’d ground on the steering wheel. A sting went through Ronan’s arm as the needle went in, but he savoured it. He closed his eyes and could hear Kavinsky pushing down the big red button, could feel him lying down next to him. He’d fall asleep any second. He breathed in the by now familiar scent of leather and gasoline that was Kavinsky. Any second. What a pair they made, two Aglionby boys who looked nothing like Aglionby boys lying here on the hood of the car, connected by two small plastic tubes sticking out from their wrists and running into the intestines of a weird silver suitcase. Why wasn’t he falling asleep?  
Ronan cracked open an eye and saw Kavinsky hovering over him, lips pursed in scrutiny. 

“It worked in the dream.”

“Nah, your Pensieve sucks,” Ronan said, yanking the needle out of his arm. 

“PASIV.”

“Whatever.”

Kavinsky kicked the suitcase down the hood into the grass. “I’ll just dream a new one.”

Ronan grinned. “Will it work as well as this one?” 

“There’s nothing I can’t do, Lynch. Nothing.” 

“Oh yeah?” He probably shouldn’t enjoy riling Kavinsky up as much as he did. “Then why’d you dream a piece of shit?”

“I’m motherfucking Kavinsky, man. I’ll get it to work.” Kavinsky had a hard set to his jaw when he was angry, a greek marble statue sort of jaw. 

Ronan just stared. He was good at staring. 


	6. Popcorn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan and Kavinsky have a movie night.

Ronan’s phone buzzed on the nightstand. Turning to the side and squinting at the too bright square, he swiped the lock pad.   
  
_Come to my place cocksucker, I downloaded a movie_  
  
It buzzed again in his hands.   
  
_It’s not porn, your virgin eyes will be safe_  
 _Xoxo_  
  
Ronan rolled his eyes. Trust Kavinsky to think texting him at 3 AM was a good idea. It wasn’t like he’d been asleep, though, tracing and retracing invisible patterns on the bedsheets. Ronan decided Kavinsky knew him too well. Maybe he shouldn’t go, just to prove him wrong.   
Gansey was still awake, too, that would make it harder to sneak out. He could hear him in the other room, cutting cardboard, undoubtedly adding more buildings to his miniature model of Henrietta. If Gansey didn’t get his sleep habits under control anytime soon, they’d probably have to live in a Henrietta inside a Henrietta. Ronan swung his legs over the side of the bed, which prompted Chainsaw to squawk at him from across the room. 

“Just going out,” he said. 

“Kirah?”

“Yeah.” 

He could feel her judging him all the way to the BMW. 

“Ronan?” This was Gansey, standing in the door to Monmouth, dressed in his obnoxious teal shirt. Somehow he’d managed to sneak up on Ronan.

“Don’t,” Ronan said, unlocking the BMW. It was going to be the BMW tonight, not the Mitsu, ‘cause even if Ronan decided to grace Kavinsky with his presence, he didn’t need to drive there in fucking Kavinsky’s car on top of that. He wasn’t his bitch. 

“Don’t what?” 

Ronan flailed his hands. “You know. Preach. Don’t preach.”

Gansey shrugged. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. I won’t preach. I’ll just bear witness then.” And by bearing witness he meant staring holes into Ronan’s neck, holes that screamed: I know where you’re going. I know what you’re doing. And I do not approve. 

The difference between them was, Ronan thought, that Gansey wanted to be good, and he wanted Ronan to be good with him. Ronan didn’t care whether Gansey was good or bad. He just knew that he liked Gansey. He also knew that he didn’t like Kavinsky, but he didn’t like sleeping either, and he still had to do it from time to time. Everything else would have been a lie, just like sweating through white shirts and getting tangled up in red ties. That was Declan’s world. Gansey’s, if he had to. Maybe Adam could do it, too, pretend to be someone he was not. Ronan couldn’t. Ronan could never be anyone but Ronan, and if that meant being a self-destructive asshole, at least he was being self-aware.   
He slid into the driver’s seat.

“Are you going to tell me why?” Gansey called. A question. Or two. The first question: Why do you keep meeting him?   
The second one: What’s it that he can give you that I can’t?  
Ronan didn’t know. Not in a way that he could put into words. Gansey was good at words. Not Ronan. Not Kavinsky. They relied on a different kind of language, preferably one simple enough that it could be carried inside a fist. He watched Gansey’s figure get smaller in the rear mirror and knew he would always disappoint both of them for not choosing either.   
  
An hour into the movie, Ronan was pretty sure that Arthur and Eames were gay for each other. He and Kavinsky were sprawled on the couch in Kavinsky’s basement, watching a white SUV falling in slow motion on the ostentatious flat screen and occasionally, they threw popcorn at each other just to remind themselves they weren’t actually friends. Of course, Kavinsky had a popcorn machine, a sleek and shiny dream thing that spit out corn of all colours and flavours you could dream of. The sugary contents of Ronan’s bucket tasted an awful lot like gasoline, but he didn’t have time to wonder what that said about him, because on screen, another dream level was just collapsing.

“Boom,” hollered Kavinsky, sitting up straighter and knocking down his bucket of popcorn. 

“Watch it, fuckface,” Ronan said, flipping the corn off his jeans. They stared at the screen in silence for a minute, then Ronan said:

“I know why your PASIV didn’t work.” 

Kavinsky arched an eyebrow at him, so Ronan popped some popcorn in his mouth for good effect and talked around his chewing.

“Cause you’re damn stupid, basically. You forgot to dream up a fucking sedative.”

“I love it when you talk dirty to me,” Kavinsky said, but it lacked the usual lightness. Ronan could tell that what Kavinsky really wanted to do was bang his head on the table. 

“Motherfucking Kavinsky, man,” Ronan said. “Calls himself a drug expert and then forgets the drugs. I could dream that suitcase better than you.”

“Why don’t you?”

Too late, Ronan remembered the ley line. He bit his lip, which Kavinsky took to mean that he’d been lying, because he laughed, loud and throatily, throwing his head back against the couch.

“You can’t.” 

In reply, Ronan dug his hands into his pockets, deep, deep down, fishing for the little green pills he’d taken from the Mitsu. His wrist got stuck, due to the awkward angle he was sitting in, and Kavinsky laughed again, swinging a leg over Ronan’s thighs.   
Ronan stopped moving, suddenly rigid as a rock. Kavinsky was out of his mind, he thought, and the realisation was sharp, slicing through the tissue of ignorance Ronan had wrapped across his own eyes in order to protect himself from — what? He’d always known Kavinsky was mad. Why did this feel so new? 

“Here,” Kavinsky said, holding a pill between his teeth. Ronan’s lungs stopped moving as well. This was out of his league. How had he ever thought he could keep up with Kavinsky? If he didn’t fight this now, he’d —

  
Kavinsky’s eyes were glinting with the dare. No, Ronan wasn’t a coward. So he shut up his thoughts and closed the distance between them, not breathing, his mind going to the same blank space it went to when they were racing, and then the pill was in his system before he could even properly register the brush of Kavinsky’s lips, the soft clash of teeth against teeth, the remnants of leather-wristband flavoured popcorn. Ronan flavoured.   
  
Cabeswater unfolded as if it had been waiting for him, welcoming him home with a blanket of silence pressing onto his ears. He didn’t even have a heartbeat, he was just floating. But that wasn’t what Ronan had come here for, only, he couldn’t really remember what he’d come here for.  
He found himself wading into the pool between the trees and the water clinging to his legs transformed to a sea of hands grabbing for him, sliding across his skin, every single hand belonging to Joseph Kavinsky. He could tell because they all spotted the same garish cigarette burn, and was this a nightmare or some twisted sort of dream?   
The PASIV, Ronan thought. _That’s_ what he’d come here for. _In, grab your stuff, out._ He spotted one of the many hands a few yards ahead holding the suitcase, and when he wrenched himself towards it, all those fingers slid across his thighs, along the seam of his jeans, dipped beneath his shirt, clung to him in ways that weighed him down more than water ever could. He wrestled the suitcase free and flipped it open to check there was a perfectly round vial of some clear liquid inside. This was it.   
Ronan opened his eyes. Something heavy was in his lap that wasn’t Kavinsky. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just came out of a 24h fever bout. If this is what hell feels like I want to go to heaven, please.  
> Jk, we all know we're going to hell for this ship.


End file.
